CAN NORTHEAST REPUBLICANS GET THEIR GROOVE BACK?

How do you cheer up a New England Republican? Perhaps you can reminisce about the early 20th century — when the GOP had the six-state region locked up.

Quick quiz: In Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 electoral triumph, only two states went to his Republican opponent, Alf Landon. Which were they?

Answer: Vermont and Maine.

New England was once the Republican heartland, all right. But a giant wave of blue paint swept over it, starting in Massachusetts during the '50s and finishing the job in Maine by the 1990s. The party has seen similar, if less dramatic, slippage in the Northwest, Rockies and Midwest.

Mere remnants of New England's once mighty GOP delegation survive in Washington, and they're worried. Voters last year dismissed four of the region's five Republican representatives, leaving only the miracle of Christopher Shays standing in the Connecticut suburbs.

One victim of the anti-Republican surge was Charles Bass of New Hampshire. A "visceral" hatred for Bush was the voters' leading motive for replacing otherwise likable Republicans, he told me.

Bush was indeed a problem for Republicans in New England. But the itching question remains: Is he a problem or The Problem? If Bush is The Problem, then relief is at hand in January 2009, when he leaves office. But if he's only emblematic of a party that no longer speaks the socially liberal and fiscally conservative dialect of the GOP past, then Republicans in this region are going to be lonely.

Bass insists that 2006 was an aberration, not a last gasp for New England Republicans. But he did concede, "The Northeast is an area where there is a lot of missionary work to be done." Bass now heads the Republican Main Street Partnership, which is trying to move the party to the center.

The 2008 election could prove problematic for two New England Republicans facing re-election, Sens.

John Sununu of New Hampshire and Susan Collins of Maine. Both are doing their best to put distance between themselves and Bush.

Collins does have a high approval rating, but then again, so did Lincoln Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican who recently lost his Senate seat. "People would stop, roll down their windows and tell me," Lincoln Chafee remarked, "'I'm sorry, I didn't vote for you, but it wasn't your fault.'"

Andrew Smith, a political scientist and pollster at the University of New Hampshire, agrees that Bush and the Iraq war are temporary sources of local anger. But he notes that other more permanent demographic changes don't bode well for Republicans in this neck of the woods.

Most newcomers to New Hampshire, one of the last Republican holdouts, are highly educated people who work in high-tech, finance and similar professions. They are solidly Democratic or independents. And the old GOP stock — the Republicans-since-birth — are dying or moving to Arizona.

The region still elects Republican governors who campaign on the wings of moderation. One of them, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, is running for the GOP presidential nomination out of his headquarters in Boston. That's promising. On the other hand, he's been disowning half the things he said to get elected in Massachusetts.

After the November thumping, Republicans had the opportunity to rebrand themselves by electing Lamar Alexander, a moderate from Tennessee, as their Senate whip. They instead chose the retro Trent Lott of Mississippi, a former majority leader. Oh well.

Republicans won't get their Northeast groove back until they can relate to voters who don't care if the couple next door is gay but consider government debt highly shocking. Can they find their inner Nelson Rockefeller?

If they do, Chris Shays will be the first to thank them.

To find out more about Froma Harrop, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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